Ai Weiwei

Mohamed Saleck

Art 103 K

November 27, 2016

Assignment #5

Ai Weiwei

So Sorry

Installation

2009

         Ai Weiwei, born in 1957, is a contemporary Chinese artist. Working in sculpture, installations, architecture, managing expositions, photography, movies in which he is a social, cultural and political critic. After studying at the University of Cinema in Pekin and going to the United States finishing his studies at the Parsons School of Design, Mr. Weiwei comes back to China and opens his architectural studio FAKE Design in 2003. Since the seventies, Mr. Weiwei has been involved in artistic activism. Such as the Xing Xing movement in the late seventies, the start for some, in the critic of the excess of power under the regime of Mao. That leads us to an earthquake in 2008 in the town of Sichuan, that killed at least 80.000 (Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times). After the natural disaster, Ai Weiwei managed to get hundreds of volunteers to gather information and get a list with as many as possible of the children who were victim of what he calls “schools with walls made out of tofu”. He decides then to create his installation titled “So Sorry”. Ai Weiwei believes that in our time, “So Sorry” is the version of the politically correct of “fuck off” explanation given by corporations and the authorities to its citizen, whether in China or elsewhere. He chose to have his installation in Munich, Germany, at the Haus Der Kunst Museum. The choice of the location was deliberate because of its history. In fact, the museum was constructed in 1937 by the Nazi regime for the exposition Entartete Kunst (degenerate art), which was denouncing modern art that did not correspond to the esthetic and ideology criteria of the Nazi regime.(Artbios.net)

        “So sorry” is an installation that makes spectators relive the mistakes that are too big to be forgiven, mocking the entities in power, asking for public apologies and real change. From that, he got the idea of Remembering. Mr. Weiwei put 9000 backpacks covering the whole side of the museum, spelling in mandarin “she lived happily for seven years in this world”. A quote he got from the mother of one of the young victims killed by the earthquake, due to the corruption and greed that lead to the buildings collapsing way easier than they normally should have. As he explains it from his own words “The idea to use backpacks came from my visit to Sichuan after the earthquake in May 2008. During the earthquake many schools collapsed. Thousands of young students lost their lives, and you could see bags and study material everywhere. Then you realize individual life, media, and the lives of the students are serving very different purposes. The lives of the students disappeared within the state propaganda, and very soon everybody will forget everything” (Ai Weiwei).

 I think that Ai Weiwei’s inspiration comes from his love of his country, in particular the common person that he is willing to risk his life for to get them a life with liberty and freedom of expression. He also gets his will from the passion of fighting the corruption and the government’s oppression of his people.

        One of the things that I like about Ai Weiwei, is his spontaneity. He reacts immediately to any injustice or cause that he believes in, using social media, and mainly his Twitter account. Instead of weighing in the options and waiting until the cause starts to fade away in the news, he makes into news, international news, which propels it into a pertinent one, where the government or corporation in question always try to squash it with fake apologies and lead to an inevitable reboot all over of the same mistakes.

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